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The ONLY Website Brides Need to Plan a Wedding. (Um, Besides This One, Obvi)

I know my wedding was only five years ago, but there have been so many awesome developments in the weddings world since then that I kind of feel like I got married in the Stone Age. Here's one thing I WISH existed when I was a bride: Carats & Cake, a website that's a whole explosion of awesome even though it's still in the beta phase.

There are so many great things about the site that I almost can't wrap my brain around it all, but I'll do my best to explain it. It's basically a smattering of Pinterest with a super-helpful, localized twist. Let's just jump right in.

So let's say I'm planning on getting married in Connecticut. (Where I did get married.) I can have Carats & Cake show me only photos from Connecticut weddings, which are uploaded by the bride and groom, Pinterest-style after the fact. So here's a sampling of the Connecticut weddings:

Then when I click on one of the weddings, I can see up to 20 photos.

Clicking on a photo then shows me which vendors the bride and groom source, so in this pic, the photographer and the florist.

So say I'm looking for a wedding photographer. I click on the studio's name here, and it takes me to their Carats & Cake page, where I can see more photos the photographer's "tagged" in AND whether other couples were happy with this vendor's work.

And if I want to find vendors without virtually flipping through a bajillion photos, I can just click on one of the cute little icons at the bottom and check out the vendor pages for, say, JUST hair and makeup stylists who work where I'm getting married.

It's also helpful because in small towns, lots of vendors don't have a strong Web presence, so finding the best place to, say, rent tuxes can be a lot harder than googling "tuxedo rentals eastern Connecticut." With Carats & Cake, you're not relying on mom-and-pop vendors to show up in a search engine—instead you're relying on other brides and grooms to find the awesomeness and share the info with you.

The site also lets you directly contact brides who have uploaded photos, so if they didn't cite a vendor for, like, the floral-print straws in the background of a pic, you can ask where they found them.

Are you starting to see why this is genius?

Or course you could go to, say, The Knot forums to read through vendor reviews, but I find the format of Carats & Cake SO much more appealing. Especially when most vendor reviews don't include photos, which are helpful when you're choosing, say, a hairstylist or florist. (Obviously vendors can show you photos of their own work, but they're not going to show you what an updo or a boutonniere looks like after five hours of dancing, right?)

My only complaint right now is that there isn't a ton of geographic diversity. (Most of the weddings—so most of the vendors—that are on there already are NYC- or L.A.-based.) The site waits until three weddings from an area have been shared before adding that area to the list, so brides in, say, Portsmouth, N.H., are out of luck until more local brides share vendor reviews. But even then, there are reviews of vendors in other areas of the state (and nearby Massachusetts) that could probably help out a bride in coastal New Hampshire. And the site's just going to get more and more awesome over time.

Are you going to check out Carats & Cake? Can you wrap your brain around it, or have I thoroughly confused you?